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About Me

I have always been fascinated with plants and photography. I studied horticulture in school and trained as a professional wedding photographer but I soon discovered that I enjoyed landscaping and nature photography much more than photograhing weddings.
Things I enjoy are spending time with my family and hearing children laugh.
Watching my son and husband smile. I love to make jewelry with shells from " my island" and other things.
I also enjoy genealogy, road trip vacations on back roads to towns with odd names, good books, Biblical history & sharing God's word with others.
Phillipians 4:4

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Saturday, June 19, 2010

This is one of those weeks that just flew. The kind of week where you wake up one morning and realize it is Saturday, and somehow you are sure that when you went to sleep yesterday it was Wednesday.I have been very busy this week... I have gardened,

crossed daylily seeds,

made jewelry,

learned to make a chain maille cross,

cooked and played chauffeur. It has been a terrific week. It just went so by fast.If the rest of the summer goes by as fast as this week, we'll be heading back to school in about 3 hours. I am definitely not ready for that.

My camera is acting up and I am having problems lighting it up and keeping it focussed. It is one with image stabilization and even though I had put it on a tripod to take these pictures, I bracketed exposures and used time delay so that I wouldn't jostle the camera in any way, it still wasn't sharp and clear. I hate to think about replacing it, but I sure need one that works better than this one lately.

Tomorrow, I am planning to cook Father's Day Dinner for both my Hubby and my Dad. They both love the same thing and so I make it for all their birthday's and special days too. It will be a mexican cornbread ( with meat and cheese and peppers) and I will probably add some sliced tomatos, nachos and a chocolate cake. Sounds Yummy doesn't it? I will let you know how it all turns out. Have a Great Father's Day!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Is there one special recipe you remember from your childhood? One that maybe you grew up enjoying and learned to cook for yourself later? I have way more than 1. I was so blessed, My Mom and Grandma and older Sister are all great cooks and I have learned from them. Tonight, we were looking for something to munch on and this came to mind. My Mom has made these for us for as long as I can remember and sometimes still does. I make them and my sister makes them too.We always just called them "Boiled Cookies". Those of you who eat solely with your eyes, feel free to look away now. They "ain't" pretty!

But they are so so good. Sometimes Mom would make them for breakfast. Mom said she knew if she made those we would eat something ( never mind the sugar rush). Many days we would slip out without eating so if Mom made these cookies, we all ate. Shortly after I was married, I told my husband I was going to make "boiled Cookies" and he never said no but he did everything humanly possible to keep me from making them. Finally I made them before he got home from work and he loved them too. LOL, He had no idea they were really chocolate oatmeal cookies. Anyway, we made some tonight and I just had to tell you about them. If you were here, I would share, but since you aren't, Would you like the recipe? If you will leave me a comment, I will send you my recipe, but I want to know what your favorite childhood food dish was.

Some people are born organized, not me. Some people are born spenders and some are born savers. I am definitely the latter. I have yet to convince my teenager that frugality is fun, but where there is life there is hope right. I love to do things the easiest, cheapest way possible and so I thought I would share my frugal tip for seed starting today. You have probably seen them everywhere. There are hundreds of posts on the internet for making newspaper pots. The problem with newspaper pots is that I can never seem to regulate the moisture and keep the newspaper from becoming a weak soggy mess.The easiest way for me to start seeds is to use ziplock baggies. I know a lot of gardeners germinate in baggies with coffee filters or paper towels, but for me it seemed to take twice as long. ( Have I mentioned in the past that I am not the most patient person.) My method is to use ziplock sandwich bags that I buy from the dollar store. I fill the bag about 1/3 full with my moist seed starting mix. Then I dump the seeds that I have soaked overnight ( I soak them all) with about 1.5 ounces water that the seeds soaked in right into the baggie. I seal it up making sure there is air in it and set it in a warm bright spot, indoors in winter and outdoors in the shade in the warmer parts of the year. I don't open it again until I see some germination beginning. Then I leave the little plants in the bags until they have reached the top. By this time, the seedlings are ready to pot up into their starter pots.

Learning this trick increased my germination success tremendously. The frugal part is that I buy the cheapest bags at the dollar store roughly 25 bags for $1.50 and the baggies are re-usable. When I want to root things that need a lot of humidity, I use the larger baggies and set the container right into the bag. As long as there is condensation on the inside of the bags, the medium is moist enough. This method is ideal for starting plumeria, daylily and basically all seeds. Hope this works wonders for your propagation potential.